
         Chapter 19. AMANDA WISHLIST
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Chapter 19. AMANDA WISHLIST


AMANDA Core Team

Original text
AMANDA Core Team

Jean-Louis Martineau

Additions and Updates
AMANDA Core Team
<martinea@iro.umontreal.ca>

Stefan G. Weichinger

XML-conversion; Additions and Updates
AMANDA Core Team
<sgw@amanda.org>

Note

Refer to http://www.amanda.org/docs/wishlist.html for the current version of
this document.
This is a major update.
These are items that we are planning to address, OR which we would like to see
happen sometime in the future.
They appear in random order.
Of course, we aren't promising to deliver anything.
This document can be found at http://www.amanda.org/docs/wishlist.html.
You may find more up-to-date information at http://www.amanda.org/ongoing.php.
If you have any ideas about any of the following, please send an e-mail note to
mailto://amanda-users@amanda.org or mailto://amanda-hackers@amanda.org.
Jean-Louis Martineau, Stefan G. Weichinger,
AMANDA Core Team
Oct. 2004.

* Samba: Ports to non-Unix platforms, specifically Macs and PCs. The hooks are
  in the AMANDA protocol to support non-dump backup programs, but no-one has
  volunteered to implement the client side. sgw: Mac OS X is able to run the
  client, so only the PC is left, and I suggest that we should go the SAMBA-
  way, I think. Samba is working well, is documented and developed further, so
  I think this will be a stable path to go and support. And people don't need
  to compile/install anything on their Win-boxes, just add a user and shares
  ... opinions welcome.


* Samba: Samba should be treated as a different backup program, not as GNUTAR,
  because it cannot handle dump-style incrementals.


* Samba: multiple exclusion-patterns. Since Samba 3.0.3 smbclient supports the
  usage of multiple exclude-patterns. This would enable AMANDA to exclude more
  than one pattern per SMB-share, allowing to exclude pagefile.sys AND the
  registry-files, for example.


* Instead of hard-coding the interface with tape devices in AMANDA, there
  should be a higher level interface that allowed different storage devices to
  be used. AMANDA should also be able to retain backups in disk, even after
  they are taped, for faster restore of recently backed up data. It should also
  be possible to store a single backup in multiple tapes, for redundancy.


* We need a better protocol between the driver and dumpers. setup terminated
  (to not start to dump on the same host at the same time). driver should ask
  periodicaly if the dumper is still alive (in case the dumper hang).


* image span / multiple tape. John Stange <building@nap.edu> is working on it.
  His patch will very likely go into a development-branch.


* retry failed backups in a single run. If backup fails because of active
  filesystems or lack of memory, AMANDA could throw the failed backup away and
  run it again, instead of trying it again in the next run only.


* Support for client-initiated backups might be interesting, but the server
  would have to keep listening for clients backup requests for a configurable
  period of time. This could be used to back up secure hosts, for instance.


* Backups to remote tape devices (i.e., not in the main AMANDA server), as well
  as to remote filesystems should be supported.


* multi-tape : AMANDA should be able to write to many tape at the same time.
  Need some criteria to select which dump should go on which tape? By level,
  host name, ???


* A way to tell if some dump must be done before/after some other. (eg. DLE X
  must be started after DLE Y is started/dumped/taped).


* Write to tape and holding disk in parallel (For dump to tape), the dump to
  tape could be started first, while doing some dump to holding disk.


* Autoflush to tape while doing estimate.


* Keep files on holding disk after taped, that will permit faster recovery
  because they will be from holding disk, these dump will be erase when the
  same is needed for newer dump.


* Append to tape


* chg-disk
  This script writes to disks which can be accessed in a parallel way (contrary
  to the serial access to tapes). This could enable AMANDA to do writes and
  reads to several vtapes in parallel (e.g. doing an amrestore while the
  regular amdump is running).
  It would be helpful to have a script which generates the needed directory-
  structure for a given chg-disk configuration. This script should test for
  valid settings (using amgetconf to get the values out of amanda.conf), create
  the necessary slot-directories and label the new vtapes by using amlabel.
  (there are drafts available already)


* amrecover should be able to set and "rewind" the correct vtape. Currently it
  is necessary to do this manually in another tty.


* It should be possible to re-generate databases and indexes from tapes.


* AMANDA could append meta-data like databases and indexes to tape, so that
  each tape contains its own current indexes and everything to rebuild the
  server-config.


* AMANDA should install man-pages for installed programs only.


* We should provide for client-side configuration files, to specify default
  tape server, index server, and perhaps even pathnames to some programs.


* It should be possible to configure whether amidxtaped should decompress the
  dump stream or not (so amrecover could decompress it locally).


* amstatus:
  It should read degraded schedule and write which are delayed.
  It should print number of byte written to tape for the current flush.
  The taper should write a file with a byte count for the current files (every
  GB) and amstatus could read it.
  It could report the expected time before the dump finishes.


* amverify/ amverifyrun:
  It should look at the log file and compare the result.


* amrecover:
  should cd, add, remove, ... with a path with glob or regex (cd o*/linux)
  find [file] # where is that file in the current DLE? (I don't know the path)
  when [file] # when was this file dumped?
  parsing accept '\': cd HP890\ Color
  our own completion


* amkill:
  A new script to kill all process on client and server


* Convert datestamp to timestamp everywhere, that will permit many run a day,
  and be able to recover them easily. it's already done for holding disk.
  (That's a big job, AMANDA use the datestamp sometimes as INT, sometime as
  CHAR*, converting every thing to CHAR* is probably not very difficult, what
  will be difficult will be to stay compatible with the old datestamp.)


* Enhance the protocol between client-server to allow white-space and any
  character in DLE/exclude/include.


* More tools in amadmin. The administrator should be able to look at the
  database in various ways. Adding / deleting / moving disks and hosts should
  be done through amadmin instead of editing the disklist directly. This will
  allow AMANDA to do some sanity checks for the operators, to make sure
  permissions are set up right, etc.
  Suggested by Chris Jones <cjones@honors.montana.edu>.


* You should be able to force full dumps for nights other than tonight. Rather
  than one command at a time on the command line, amadmin could be a little
  shell with a help facility (ala ckermit or gnuplot, if you've seen those).


* A tape-verify pass after the AMANDA run (we already have one, but it doesn't
  work with dump as well as it does with GNU tar). Perhaps taper could
  calculate a CRC for each file and store that in the database, to be checked
  by the verifier.


* More sophisticated tape management. Should AMANDA track tapes globally,
  counting the number of times tapes were used, and recommending retirement for
  tapes at the appropriate time?


* Automatically notice that external dumps have been done. Sendsize could also
  notice if a filesystem was dumped externally from AMANDA. Right now the
  planner assumes that the incrementals it is doing are relative to the full
  dumps it is doing. If someone does a full dump of one of its filesystems (and
  writes /etc/dumpdates) outside of AMANDA, data could be lost. Sun's Backup-
  Copilot handles this well. We should too.


* What if we made the "length" in a tapetype definition always be the "no
  compression" value? Then change the dumptype "compress" option to accept
  "hardware" as another type (ala "client" and "server") and let planner do its
  normal thing with that information (including "comprate", which at the
  current default of 50% is the usual first guess for hardware compression).
  This would make setting the tape length value less confusing, and make the
  amtapetype program easier to run. You could even get more accurate planning
  than what is currently available by setting the comprate to what you know the
  data is like on a dumptype by dumptype basis. Suggested by John R. Jackson
  <jrj@gandalf.cc.purdue.edu>.


* The way to specify the schedule should be redesigned, all those strategy
  (standard, nofull, noinc, incronly, force-full) and options (skip-full, skip-
  incr) are confusing.
  We should have two options, one for full dump and one for incrementals.
  full [AUTOMATIC | SKIP | NOTIFY | FORCE | FIXED]
  incr [NONE | BUMP | NOBUMP]
  with the following values:
  AUTOMATIC: follow AMANDA scheduling (allow promoted and delayed)
  SKIP : full dump are done externally on an fixed schedule, dump nothing when
  a full is due (like skip-full).
  NOTIFY : full dumps are done externally, but are notified with the NOTIFY
  command ( amadmin <conf> notify <host> <disk>).
  FORCE : full dumps are done only with the FORCE_FULL command.
  FIXED : do full dumps on a fixed schedule (like skip-incr).
  NONE : don't do incremental dumps.
  BUMP : allow incremental dumps to bump.
  NOBUMP : do not allow incremental dumps to bump.


* Remove all compiled options that can be moved to a (the?) configuration file.
  (eg. GNU tar path, if configure can't find it, AMANDA should be able to use
  GNU tar if the path is specified on a client config file) Many people would
  like this, it would maybe also bring us closer to the possibility of working
  and usable rpms?


* Documentation:
  There is pretty much going on with the AMANDA-docs. The docs have been
  converted to Docbook/XML and form the new module xml-docs in the AMANDA-CVS-
  repository.
  The FAQ-O-Matic could be replaced by a Wiki. Suggested by Harlan Stenn
  <Harlan.Stenn@pfcs.com>.
  The xml-docs need more formatting and reviewing.
  The tapetypes from the FOM should go into the XML-docs.
  The docs would benefit from adding some illustrations.

The WISHLIST should get shortened.
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